The Fig Tree (20 page)

On 15 March 1947, the couple presented their first Melbourne concert. Potashinski opened with the partisans' song ‘Never Say'. It was the first time the song, which was to become the hymn of commemoration evenings, was performed on the Melbourne stage. Moshe sang it with a haunting intensity. He sang it as it was intended to be sung by its composer, Hirsh Glick, the partisan and poet, who had been an inmate of the Vilna ghetto:

Never say there is only death for you

When leaden skies may be concealing days of blue

Because the hour that we have hungered for is near

Beneath our tread the earth will tremble: We are here!

As I glance through the programs of their concerts, at the monologues and songs of struggle, I can imagine the impact of the two artists, alone on stage, within four years of their descent into Auschwitz. I can picture the impact of strident dirges, such as Sholem Asch's ‘March of the Warsaw Martyrs' recited by Mila Waislitz, with ‘the restraint and depth of feeling of which she is so much the master', as one critic wrote. And I can imagine the impact of Gebirtig's prophetic anthem, ‘It Is Burning', which Potashinski first sang in the bunkers of Auschwitz:

It's burning, brothers it's burning.

Our poor village is burning.

Bitter winds are fanning higher,

Leaping tongues of flame and fire.

One reviewer wrote, it was ‘an unforgettable night'. It was the first of many unforgettable nights before capacity audiences. The couple embarked on an extensive tour. They were anxious to make up for lost time. In the early months of 1948, they performed in Sydney to standing ovations. They stood on an uncluttered stage, with a black backdrop, with no special effects, no set design. They were like phantoms appearing from the ruins.

The couple's presence can be seen in the photos that adorn the programs: Mila is pictured in a wide-sleeved white blouse, smiling. Her hair cascades over her shoulders, as if in defiance of her once bare skull. Moshe, master of mimicry and expressive movement, wears an elegant jacket and bow tie. His receding hair is combed back from an ample forehead, his thick eyebrows are raised in an ironic smile.

Their repertoire recreated a lost world. Their ferocious determination spoke of a will steeled in fire. They ranged from tragedy to the comic, through the full spectrum of the prewar cabaret repertoire, augmented by ghetto songs and gallows humour.

After a gala farewell recital in Sydney the two actors were driven straight to the airport. They touched down the next morning in Perth. Moshe was dressed in a beret and loosely belted corduroy jacket. He carried a worn leather satchel overflowing with manuscripts and texts. The members of the Perth Yiddish stage were on hand to meet them. They presented Mila with bouquets of carnations and gladioli.

Suddenly, someone burst from the crowd and dashed towards her. The couple fell into each other's arms. They were ‘Auschwitz sisters'. They clung to each other on a summer morning in Perth and, for a moment, they were back in hell.

Moshe and Mila performed during the summer months. One of their shows was called, with aching simplicity, ‘We Will Live'. And between performances they shared their tales in the homes of Perth Jewry. ‘They set our quiet world alight,' one ageing resident recalls.

In 1949, Moshe performed in New Zealand. In September, the couple journeyed to Canada. They toured North America for over a year. They moved on to Israel in 1951. Wherever they performed they were greeted with enthusiasm. Wherever they appeared they recounted their unbelievable tale.

Mila and Moshe returned to Melbourne with ambitious plans to create a national Yiddish theatre, but Potashinski, like so many before him, took up the rag trade for a living. There were not enough resources to realise his dream. By day he sold dresses, while at night he presented the occasional concert or performance with the David Herman Theatre. He directed several plays, among them David Pinski's
The Treasure
, which so entranced me on that memorable winter's evening in 1958.

Those who experienced his directorial style speak of him as a man on edge. He shifted rapidly through a range of moods. He would weep at the beauty of a few lines of text, and the next moment he would rage at the limitations of his craft. He was a man torn by the contradictions of his tumultuous life.

So desperate were Mila and Moshe to perform they would travel to the resort town of Hepburn Springs in summer. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Hepburn Springs was a favoured summer retreat for Melbourne Jews. All year round they slaved to remake their lives, but for a few blessed weeks they spent their annual holidays in this country town.

They took over Roller's Continental House and the Grande Hotel. Their days revolved around the spring waters. The springs reminded them of their prewar retreats. They strolled to the mineral baths throughout the day. Between baths they chatted, read newspapers, sipped coffee and played cards. And at night, they made their way to Fitzgerald's cabaret to attend a concert featuring stars of the Melbourne Yiddish stage.

Fitzgerald's cabaret stood in the main street. Behind the bar, a door opened out onto a dance hall with a portable stage. Moshe and Mila joined fellow actors to present an evening of ‘Humour! Songs! Sketches! Enjoyment!' This is how the posters proclaimed it.

Concerts also took place in the rotunda by the spring, surrounded by forests of eucalyptus and pine. They performed to the squawk of galahs, the distant hoot of an owl; while above them whirled the spiralling galaxies of the Milky Way.

Moshe Potashinski passed away in 1985; Mila Waislitz in 1993. Those who knew her well have described the quiet dignity Mila maintained to the end. She took care of her appearance, even on her deathbed. She painted her fingernails, rouged her lips and groomed her hair. She retained the childlike awe with which she viewed the world.

And it was on her deathbed that Mila confirmed the rumour: she could not bear children because of the experiments conducted upon her by Dr Mengele in Auschwitz:

Unborn children, never mine

Lost forever, lost in time.

How can such things be understood?

Between Sky and Sea

On 30 June 1933, a Yiddish poet arrived in Melbourne. He stood aboard the French boat the
Ville d'Amien
as it steamed through Port Phillip Bay, and stared towards the pier where, coming into focus, was a sizeable crowd of people. They were waiting for him.

‘A Yiddish poet is about to arrive in Melbourne.' This was the thought uppermost in the minds of those who waited. A good proportion of the Yiddish-speaking community of Melbourne had assembled to welcome their esteemed guest. This was an event to be savoured. A Yiddish poet was about to land on these until recently alien shores. He had sailed from the old world, as they had. He was the bearer of news, of greetings from their loved ones, and of a vision etched in words.

This is what they craved more than anything else, those assembled upon the wharf. Words, with the familiar lilt of the old country that was fast becoming a fantasy. Words that were imbued with intimacy and the scent of wild conifers. Words that radiated the ethereal glow of silver birches under a winter sun.

As the
Ville d'Amien
approached the wharf, most in the assembled crowd did not reflect upon the fact that, indeed, they were standing under a winter sun of a different kind, and that, instead of silver birches, there were the ghostly greys of eucalyptus, the muted greens of coastal shrubs, the pastel blues of the southern continent.

The Yiddish poet, however, as he leaned on the rails of the
Ville d'Amien
, saw these colours and was transfixed. The world about him on this morning was fresh and new. It had about it a raw beauty that he found intoxicating. He had been intoxicated for days now, ever since the passengers had first sighted land. As they approached the coast of the mainland there loomed a streak of beaches, naked against an ocean that pounded them with a rhythmic fury.

On the night of the first sighting, the poet had made an astonishing discovery. Rising above him was a new moon within a sky on fire with constellations he had never seen with such clarity. And this crescent of a moon, dwarfed by the enormity of the southern heavens, hung upside down, in a reverse crescent to the moons he had seen in the old world. He was, after all, not a scientist, but a poet, and a Yiddish poet at that. The poet was Melekh Ravich. He was on a mission on behalf of Yiddish schools in Poland. His official task was to raise money for the impoverished educational facilities of the old country. Yet, also, he was afflicted with an uncontrollable urge to explore yet another corner of the globe, for Ravich was at heart, in the grand tradition, a wandering Jew. He longed for places new.

Several days after his arrival seven hundred people crowded into the newly built Kadimah, in Lygon Street, to greet their honoured guest. The audience overflowed into the corridors, the foyer and onto the stage. Ravich was welcomed with tumultuous applause. Speakers sang his praises. Actors recited extracts from his works. Musicians performed songs from the old home.

Among them was my mother. Hadassah too had recently arrived from Poland on the same boat, the
Ville d'Amien
. She had sailed on the previous voyage, and had arrived six months earlier. In later years she would recall the night she sang for Ravich as the most memorable of her life. It eased her pain at being separated from those she had left behind. She felt, for the first time, a sense of belonging in the new land.

Ravich responded with a stirring speech praising the treasures of Yiddish language. Soon after, armed with notebooks and a Kodak camera, the poet resumed his wandering ways. He journeyed from Melbourne, via the Blue Mountains, through Sydney and Brisbane, to outback Australia. He travelled deep into the continent by train.

In Alice Springs, he resumed his journey in the cabin of a mail truck. The truck sagged under a pile of freight, water tanks, spare tyres, and sacks bloated with mail. It lurched over dry riverbeds, jolted over unpaved roads littered with stones, and laboured over snaking paths that seemed to have no end.

Even in the desert heat, Ravich wore a bow tie, waistcoat and jacket. He journeyed with a pipe clinging to his lips, observing, reflecting, writing by the light of campfires, or under the mosquito-infested globes of dust-ridden hotel rooms.

Ravich wrote as if his life depended upon it. He was driven by a compulsion that had engulfed him at an early age. His descriptions of his outback travels were published in Warsaw newspapers, and fired the imaginations of Jews who lived in the tenements and cottages of old world cities and towns. ‘We are preparing for a long journey, my patient readers,' he wrote. ‘We are going to get to know a whole new world.' Through his eyes the southern continent assumed an aura of mystery. Ravich sang the land's praises, and saw its promise as a haven, a place for a fresh start.

After twenty-five weeks of continuous travel, Ravich returned to Melbourne in triumph. On a sultry summer night, 10 December 1934, on the stage of the Kadimah Hall, he recounted the tale of his epic journey across the ‘length and breadth of Australia'. He enthralled the capacity crowd with his lantern slides and photos of desert places.

Ravich's words and images took the audience into a world they had barely dreamed of. They were, for the most part, immigrants, newly arrived. They spent their days chasing work, a means to survive. They travelled vicariously with a wandering poet as their guide. His images rose up like unearthly visions before their eyes.

Ravich moved from broad vistas to eccentric details, from wide-angle snaps to minute close-ups. A view of the train in its entirety was followed by an image of the tracks—two black lines cutting diagonally across white sand. The carriages were pictured as dark retreats penetrated by beacons of light. Waterbags swung from the ceilings.

‘The passengers,' said Ravich, ‘would have preferred them to be filled with whisky.' He photographed a mountain of empty beer bottles outside a lone pub in a tiny settlement. The problems of the Northern Territory could be solved in four words, exclaimed the poet: ‘More water, less beer!'

Ravich spun tales of frontier towns, remote stations, uninhabited deserts and wayward camels trotting towards receding horizons; of obsessed gold prospectors in search of elusive fortunes, and young men who wandered the remote north without money or work.

The poet was overwhelmed by the land's fragility. A primitive weathervane could be a matter of life and death. Water was the most precious resource. Life was possible only because there were waterholes, tanks and reservoirs that could withstand the dry. He came across calcium bore water ‘as white as milk'; and he saw ant hills high enough ‘to hang a hat on'. The hills seemed to extend for hundreds of kilometres. In the evening light they looked like ‘battalions of stone soldiers'.

Within this vastness each plant assumed great significance. The centre of the continent was a wilderness in which trees sagged like wilting dogs waiting for rain. Ravich photographed trees ‘as hard as iron', and flowering shrubs that lit up a monochrome terrain. He saw many plants that he could not name.

The most remarkable tree for a wandering writer was the paperbark. Its white pages were soft to the touch. The peeling bark was a living parchment. Each layer was so brittle, but somehow it held fast. And everywhere, sooner or later, there would appear that most mysterious of trees, the eucalypt.

The eucalypt was a poet's tree. It was clothed in a spectrum of colours, from ghostly whites to bleached reds. It could appear in lush groves, or within forests; but more often, it stood alone. It was at once fragile, yet more enduring than the trees of old Europe. It was forever shedding its skin, yet it remained evergreen.

Loneliness. Isolation. Emptiness. These are the terms that reappear throughout Ravich's writings and talks. He wandered through remote settlements where a scattering of ‘lonely houses', languished on ‘hot still nights'. The contrast could not have been greater for this man of letters who once moved with ease in the literary circles of Vienna and Warsaw. Now Ravich was travelling through a landscape where no one passed for months on end, a terrain on which it was possible to experience ‘seasickness while moving over rock-infested sand'.